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Background
Fisheries management
is a complex process with exceptional data demands. Without a doubt, the
more robust and sound the data, the more effective the fisheries management
program. The process relies on two primary data sources: (1) fisheries-dependent
data or information collected from fishermen and dealers regarding catch,
landings, and effort; and (2) fisheries-independent data or information
collected by scientists via some type of survey platform. Fisheries-dependent
data give managers and scientists an overall picture of the fishery, while
fisheries-independent data, over the long term, provide information on
the status of the stock.
Since the amount of data necessary to properly conduct fisheries management
is often very extensive, no single fishery management agency has the fiscal,
personnel, or physical capabilities to meet the objectives of state, interstate,
and federal fishery management plans currently in place, nor those planned
for the future. To minimize or overcome the problems associated with insufficient
funding and similar limitations, agencies often combine resources and
share responsibilities to gather information that, working individually,
they might not have been able to accomplish on their own. Benefits of
cooperative sampling efforts include more cost efficient and time efficient
sampling, the ability to sample over a larger geographic area or longer
period of time, and more consistent sampling protocols within that area
or time.
Cooperative programs are currently used on the Atlantic coast to collect
both fishery dependent and fishery-independent data. The Atlantic Coastal
Cooperative Statistics Program (ACCSP) has been implemented to collect
catch, effort, and other information from commercial and recreational
fisheries from Maine to Florida. Fishery-independent data are collected
from North Carolina south as part of the Southeast Area Monitoring and
Assessment Program (SEAMAP), which also includes the Gulf of Mexico and
the Caribbean. Like NEAMAP, SEAMAP itself is not a research program, but
provides a platform for the development and implementation of research
programs. SEAMAP originated during the 1980s but, until the recent development
of NEAMAP, there was no large-scale cooperative effort to collect fisheries-independent
data in near shore ocean waters north of North Carolina.
NEAMAP grew out of an Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission resolution
in October 1997 to begin development of a coordinated fisheries-independent
sampling program in the Northeast region. The NEAMAP Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) was approved on March 28, 2003, with all partner agencies as full
signatories by October 2004. To learn more about the structure of the
NEAMAP Program, see Program Structure and Organization (link to "Program
Structure and Organization" subpage). For more detailed background
information on NEAMAP:
Memorandum of Understanding
Program Design
Fishery Independent Surveys
2002-2006
Operations Plan ; 2007-2011 Implementation Plan
2007 Operations Plan
Program
Structure and Organization
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